Skin is the largest and one of the most complex body organs. It comprises from about 15 to 20% of the entire body weight and serves as a protective barrier to environmental toxins and assaults. Very few people are satisfied with their skin condition, particularly facial skin. Skin care product companies have made a big business out of treating common skin maladies such as dryness, oiliness, uneven pigmentation, wrinkles, laxity and the like. Skin that is in good health is referred to as normalized skin. The skin's immune response to environmental conditions such as excessive sun exposure, cold weather, wind, or cigarette smoke can have an effect on skin. In some cases skin may become irritated or inflamed—in other words the skin is no longer normalized. For years cosmetics manufacturers have sold products for normalizing skin that included ingredients believed to have anti-inflammatory or anti-irritant properties. However, since there are a myriad of biological reactive pathways that contribute to skin inflammation and these products often contained ingredients that did not have any impact on any of these reactive pathways, they were not often as effective as they could have been. For example, one immune response of assaulted tissue is histamine release, predominantly by basophilic cells. Another reactive pathway that contributes to skin inflammation is release of cyclooxygenase-2 (also referred to as COX-2), an enzyme known to promote inflammation and pain. Yet another reactive pathway that contributes to skin inflammation is the release of an enzyme, phospholipase-2 (PLA-2) by cells and tissue subjected to immune assaults. Current skin care products may or may not contain ingredients that have inhibitory effects on these reactive pathways. Accordingly, such products may not be optimally effective in normalizing skin.
There is a need for compositions for normalizing skin, that is, treating skin that may be inflamed, irritated, or in otherwise a less than optimal state of health, to obtain improvement.
It is an object of the invention to provide a method for formulating products to normalize skin, or treating irritated or inflamed skin for improvement. Such method includes identifying one or more reactive pathways that contribute to skin inflammation and selecting one or more ingredients that inhibit the pathways selected and formulating the selected ingredients into a composition that when topically applied exhibits skin normalizing properties.
It is a further object to provide a method for normalizing skin, or treating irritated or inflamed skin for improvement comprising applying to the skin a composition that has been formulated by identifying a plurality of pathways that contribute to inflammation and selecting at least one ingredient that inhibits each of the pathways identified and formulating the plurality of selected ingredients into a composition.
It is a further object of the invention to provide a composition for normalizing skin or treating skin irritation or inflammation comprising a plurality of ingredients that are selected to inhibit a plurality of pathways that contribute to skin inflammation.